During eleven days in August, the international Interaktionslabor in Göttelborn meets to celebrate its tenth year of existence in the former Coal Mine Götterborn, now a thriving campus of new industry and innovation.

This year’s lab will continue the recently founded platform, “Performance Academy,” of workshops for performance-media design, interactional and wearable concepts, and investigations of gestural processes, protocols, and social choreography.

Interaktionslabor promotes a concept of research opened up to acknowledge the relevance of experimental treatments of actuality – of forms of collaborative creation – that may take us beyond the perspectives and protocols of established inquiry as we know it, artistically and academically. Since 2011, we have chosen gesture and non-verbal communication as focus of the interactive workshop – gesture as practice that is at once aesthetic, corporeal, and political.

On Thursday, August 8, we invite the public to a VOICE ANIMATION workshop with curator/creative consultant Alessandra Ravanelli (Vienna) - this workshop is open to the public. We look forward to your visit.

A final exhibition will be held on Saturday, August 10, at 8:30 pm in the evening, Graue Halle exhibition hall on the campus of the Göttelborn coal mine; entry is free.

During ten days in August, the international Interaktionslabor in G?ttelborn collaborates with XMLab, Centre de Cr?ation Chor?ographique Luxembourgeois TROIS C-L, and Donlon Dance Company on creating a new PERFORMANCE ACADEMY, a shared platform of workshop spaces and research facilities for performance-media design, interactional and wearable concepts, and investigations of gestural processes, protocols, and social choreography.

With its partners XMLab, Centre de Cr?ation Chor?ographique Luxembourgeois TROIS C-L, and Donlon Dance Company, Interaktionslabor shares the sense that the concept of research should be opened up (again), and aims to acknowledge the relevance of experimental treatments of actuality ? of forms of collaborative creation ? that may take us beyond the perspectives and protocols of (established academic) inquiry as we know it. Which is why we have chosen gesture as focus of the inaugural workshop ? gesture as practice that is at once aesthetic, corporeal, and political. The lab will offer a series of parallel modules investigating the relations between choreography and software, sound and motion-design, movement capture and 3d digital/virtual environment navigation, light and projection architecture, dirty electronics and interactive programming.

The workshop in August will inaugurate a 12-months series of performance and research events.

Born in Croatia, Ciciliani received his musical training as a composer and electronic musician in New York, Hamburg and The Hague. Already during his studies he has collected extensive experience not only in the fields of ?academic? composition, but also in free improvisation and cross-disciplinary projects. Typical for Ciciliani?s work is that it combines seemingly contradictory materials, giving the composition a feeling of experiment and playfulness, with surprising turns and a variety of color. In his more recent work a special field of interest lies in the combination of sound and light, which was also the topic of his PhD research that he completed at Brunel University London.The different ?genres? in which Ciciliani?s music can be heard and seen, are reflecting his manifold musical activities. His music has been programmed by festivals and concert series of electronic experimental music like Club Transmediale Berlin, SuperDeluxe/Tokyo or the NowNow Series/Sydney just as much as by festivals for chamber music like Wien Modern, Forum Neue Musik Deutschlandfunk, Zagreb Biennale, ISCM World Music Days and many more.Marko Ciciliani is guest-professor at the Institute for Acoustics and Media (IEM) of the Arts University in Graz/Austria and is also teaching at the composition department of the University for Music and Performing Arts Vienna. Furthermore he is lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences in St.P?lten. (www.ciciliani.com)

dear online visitor:we have turned out webcams off this year, as we are working on musical and sensorial processes in an abandoned electricity plant (without network), and we did not think it was important that you SEE us. Instead of a cam, we shall soon post audio files on our website, so you can HEAR us.

entry: free.How to find us? The 10KV Electric Plant is on the highest level street (north side) on the Mine campus of Coal Mine G?ttelborn, and if you arrive at main entrance, walk along the northern boulevard (which looks like a construction site, as the former massive washing building was demolished) towards the largest white tower, and as you ascend to towards the end of the street, turn left and walk back up to a large red brick building which has a humming sound, this is the electrical plant. we shall put up signs, and you will find us.

*******************************************************************************The 7th International Interaktionslabor takes place from July 20 to August 2, 2009, on the site of the former coal mine G?ttelborn in southwest Germany.

This year the main focus of the workshop is on perceptual processes. The project title -Halbinseln der Wahrnehmung/Peninsulae of Perception - is a reference to a diary written by a person afflicted with Asperger?s Syndrome. The diary has been proposed as research libretto for investigations into differing perceptual channels and psycho-social research on autism, synaesthesia, sound composition and real-time performance. The acoustic-musical dimension of the 2009 laboratory is complemented by research into design of wearable audiophonics and acousmatic architectures and psycho-acoustic illusions.

The workshop brings together artists, scientists and researchers from different backgrounds committed to sharing their experiences and catalyzing multidisciplinary science-art collaborations. Special guests in residence at the summer lab are Stefan Scheib and Katharina Bihler from the Liquid Penguin Ensemble, an experimental music-theatre group which gained wide recognition through their award-winning radio music dramas. Their latest production, ?Bout du Monde,? has just been selected radio drama of the month (June 2009) by the German Academy of the Performing Arts. Previously, ?GRAS WACHSEN H?REN - das biolingua Institut wir 100 Jahre alt? was awarded the prize for best german radio drama and the ARD Online Award in 2008. Their music theatre performance ?Eurydike hinter den Grenzen? (2007) was shown at festivals in Luxembourg, D?sseldorf, Saarbr?cken and other venues.

The laboratory is organized by theatre director and media artist Johannes Birringer who founded the Interaktionslabor in 2003 and currently holds a professorship in digital performance at Brunel University, London. ?We have had many inquiries this year, as our subject combines research into media arts and psychology,? Birringer says, ?and the lab also has a continuing commitment to challenging our assumptions about space and perceptual constructions. We look forward to the participants from Latin America, Great Britain, France and Switzerland who will join artists and educators from the region.? The lab ensemble plans to create a sonic installation in the 10KV, a former electric plant on the campus of the mine. The Interaktionslabor, which went on tour last summer to Belo Horizonte, Brasil, has become increasingly well known for its unique peripheral location, its independent, autonomous status, and the transcultural partnerships it has helped to build over the years.

The activities are open to visitors, and information about the proceedings and the research process can be found on this website

The 2007 Interaktionslabor will not have a public presentation as in previous years (Night of Interactive Media), but focus on research development.

Visitors are welcome.

On Thursday, July 26, 9:30 pm, there will be an interface evening, during which all projects will be presented or demonstrated in process.

First, the DAEDALUS_exmachina project will show the new 3D virtual game world (Walter Langelaar playing the game engine), which is in fact modeled upon the actual laboratory building. Simultaenously, Nancy Mauro-Flude performs herself via webcamera/webstream (using a server n Rotterdam, The Netherlands) into the virtual 3D environment, exploring her presences inside the artificial rooms and surfaces of the modeled architecture.

Second, guest visitor Margie Medlin showed a DVD of her new interactive work, "Quartet" (www.quartetproject.net), for dancer, musician, and robot. Informed by new scientific research in the field of physiology, this multi-media event is the culmination of several years? collaborative research. It is an investigation into the kineasthetics of music: determining movements which produce sounds, which in turn produce new choreographies.

Movement is played across the senses of the human body. Specialists from dance, music, biomedical and computational science, 3D animation and motion control use cutting edge technology to experiment with the ephemeral nature of real-time art. Virtual, mechanical and live elements come together on stage in the Great Hall at St. Bartholomew?s Hospital, creating new choreographies from sensory data. Three leading choreographers - Lea Anderson, Russell Maliphant and Lisa Nelson - will each shape sections of the performance.

Quartet?s central figure, a virtual dancer, is an avatar of sensual information, playing between its manifestation and its puppeteers. On stage the interactions between the performers slip through different pairings, trios, and quartets, such as the musician using the speed or acceleration of her violin playing to duet with the real dancer; or a trio between the real and virtual dancers and the robot camera, exploring the choreography of cinematic space: the poetics of looking and moving. This interplay uncovers the tensions within the transfer of data.

Lastly, the lab shows a rehearsal of scenes 1-4 of Suna no Onna, featuring Katsura Isobe as the "woman in the dunes" (after Teshigawara's film of the 60s). The opening scenes focus on the tactile atmosphere of the sand habitat and its digital (animated) features. The scenes also involve intelligent garments and a particular approach to design-in-movement which "dramatizes" or scripts the sensorial interfaces as part of the narrative. Scripting the interactional garments into the Suna no Onna narrative, the team is developing a collection of wearable prototypes and a stage version of the digital, live interactive scenography.

Writer in Residence Scott F. Taylor (Toronto) will read from his new theses on intersubjectivity. A discussion follows.

The research and development process at the Interaktionslabor G?ttelborn will be documented, and research texts published on this website.

26.7.07 Johannes Birringer

Interaktionslabor 2007: (16. Juli)

Wir haben die Arbeit begonnen. ! The artists and technologists are arriving, we are setting up the studio and work spaces, and the first workshop (introducing DAEDALUS) wll be Tuesday morning at 10:30.

On Thursday, July 19th July, at 19:30, there will be a debating session on this year's inetractive programming and design research. All interested visitors are welcome.

Wir freuen uns auf Ihren Besuch ? We look forward to your visit, either on site or on line.

**************************************************************************************Workshops on the first lab weekend, and rehearsals for "SUNA NO ONNA" as well as 3D design process for DAEDALUS scheduled for the next 13 days will be announced here. Most of the SUNA NO ONNA REHEARSALS will take place between 23 - 30 July, every evening at around 22:oo (after dark).

There will be no final presentation or performance, as the lab is dedicated to the research and design process, not to accomplish a quick fix or a work that could be presentable to a public after only 2 weeks. The function of or the lab is to provide a professional context for experimentation, and a place for encounter and exchange of knowledge.